Monthly Archive: June 2013

A viable National Security strategy needs to be aligned with the aspirations of the people, and it must have public support. This will ensure the safety of the nation. The government’s prime duty is ensuring the safety of the nation while guarding against various threats, states Defence and Urban Development Ministry Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

So, where, or what, precisely was this Indian ‘unity’? To find the elusive answer to this question we need to return to Nehru who, despite his inspiring romanticism, provided us the clue in the following passage (1946: 343) the essence of which is that Indian Unity is essentially a ‘middle class’ yearning. He said: “The rising middle classes … wanted some cultural roots to cling on to, something that gave them assurance of their own worth, something that would reduce the sense of frustration and humiliation that foreign conquest and rule had produced”.

(Admiral Leighton W Smith USN, C in C US Navy Europe and NATO and Allied Forces Southern Europe (1994-6) – who with his staff had prepared a military briefing on Bosnia for Holbrooke, the chief US envoy to Yugoslavia(1995+)

I always think of this excerpt whenever I read Dayan Jayathileke (DJ). Coincidentally Holbrooke US Ambassador to Germany, Assistant Secretary of State and head of the US negotiating team at the Dayton Peace talks wanted to ‘bomb for peace’.

Since Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has found it necessary to preface his ‘Devolution and Sri Lanka’s Global Vulnerability: A Response to Prof. GH Peiris’ (The Island, 6 June) with a statement of the “fundamentals” of his stand in relation to province-based devolution, it would not be inappropriate for me to spell out the essence of my perceptions on this issue.